Part 26 (1/2)

”So enter Spiteful Barbie. The one who was never going to dress up and be pretty for anyone ever again,” Nina theorized like some undead therapist.

Phoebe nodded with a sad smile. ”That summer, everything changed for me. I went the whole nine. Black nail polish, lipstick, thick eyeliner, black clothes, ripped jeans. I did my version of grunge slash goth proud. I didn't shower. I rebelled against a lot more than a bar of soap, too. I was just short of cutting myself. No one really talked to me because they were afraid of me to begin with. Except Mark. He never stopped being my friend-even when he called me an epic fail from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Mark was always my friend.”

”So what did this counselor do to change all that? Did he Dr. Phil boot camp your a.s.s?”

”Mr. Macintyre had the kind of family I'd always wanted. A whole family-a nice wife, two kids, a dog, and a big house, a backyard with a tree swing. But he told me something that made me realize nothing is perfect. His son was a meth addict. A counselor's son-one who had so many awesome things going for him that he just couldn't see because he was angry. He made me realize that a family is never perfect and it doesn't have to have both parents in it to make it happy. He helped me grieve the loss of Dad properly instead of bottling it up and letting it explode. That's not to say I don't still have a hot temper-I just get how to control it.

”Techniques and s.h.i.+t, right?”

Wanda clapped her hands. ”Techniques, you say, Phoebe? Can we write them down? No. Let's give them their own Word doc.u.ment. We'll laminate it and hang it up on the walls of OOPS.”

Phoebe laughed. ”Yep. You wanna learn a few, Nina?”

”f.u.c.k no. I just wouldn't be Nina if I wasn't a raving lunatic.”

”I wouldn't be Barbie Vampire if not for Nina the Raving Lunatic,” she reminded her.

”Heard and ignored,” Nina snarked.

Wanda threw her arms around the two of them and hugged them hard. ”Good talk, girls. Look at what we've accomplished. But there's still one wee, little matter Nina has to clear up. So while we're all hearing the *Circle of Life' song, Nina, I do believe you have a bit of a secret, too.”

Phoebe's eyes narrowed in Nina's direction. ”You have a twin, don't you? Good gravy, there are two of you.”

Nina's lips pursed. ”Nope. But you have a grandmother. Her name is Lou, and if you f.u.c.king upset her even a little, I'll break your Barbie feet. Got that?”

Phoebe's eyes went wide, but then she smiled. A grandmother. Oh, that meant fresh-baked cookies and milk and ...

”And stop right there,” Nina warned. ”She ain't the kind of grandmother that's breaking out the hand mixer. She cooks once a week, and it's the worst f.u.c.king pot roast you'll ever eat in your entire life. But you'll eat it, spit it in a napkin like I do and pretend Chef Ramsay cooked it, because if you hurt her feelings, I'll beat you like a dirty rug.”

Phoebe's fingers trembled. She had a grandmother ... ”Wait. She's not a vampire?”

Nina flicked Phoebe's hair and made a face. ”No, moron. She's a little old lady who likes game shows, b.u.t.t-a.s.s ugly Hummel figurines, and those stupid soap operas you dig. She forgets to put her teeth in her head, like, all the time, and she refuses to let Greg and me move her into the castle to live with us because she's probably more stubborn than twenty mules. She likes her things, as she calls them, and she won't part with s.h.i.+t. Even though we have enough room in that tin can to fit a small Guatemalan village. And she has no idea we're paranormal. None. Don't f.u.c.k that up.”

Phoebe grinned. She didn't care if Lou liked naked poker.

Nina cackled. ”She likes that, too.”

”What?”

”Naked poker. It makes me want to yark my lunch, but there it is, yo. She has a group of cronies she hangs out with at the senior center, and the geriatric cruise director caught her organizing a game of naked poker last year. Jesus, it was embarra.s.sing.”

Wanda giggled, putting her hand to her mouth. ”You should have seen it, Phoebe. When Nina told Lou it was strip poker, Lou scoffed and said why waste time at her age praying for a losing hand when they could just start out naked?”

Phoebe didn't even care that Nina had read her mind. She wanted to know this person. She wanted to belong. ”Can I meet her? I mean, will it be too much? I don't want to upset her.”

Nina's white teeth glowed in the darkened bedroom when she smiled. ”She raised me. There isn't a whole lot that upsets her. She's a rock. So, yeah, you can meet her. Which means I'm handing the pot roast torch to you, cupcake. We'll swap days every other week. If you're not on time, she makes you clean her dentures. It's nasty s.h.i.+t.”

She was going to be enough of a surprise. She'd wait on telling her grandmother about Penny. ”I promise not to mention Penny.”

”The f.u.c.k you won't,” Nina protested with a frown and a crack of her knuckles. ”It's not the kid's fault she's jacked up, Phoebe. I know people are a.s.sholes all the time about s.h.i.+t like that. But that won't ever happen as long as I'm around. Stop f.u.c.king hiding her because you think you have to protect her from us. Besides, Lou'd clap you in your head if you didn't. Lou'd wanna know about this. She's no pansy-a.s.s. She'd never forgive you if you didn't tell her her Joe had more than one kid. She'll be shocked, but she's a tough old bird.”

But the reality of their situation crept back in, tainting her joy at finding out she had a grandmother. ”Well, if things go south, you won't have to worry about giving up your pot roast night.”

”Nothin's goin' anywhere. Believe that s.h.i.+t,” Nina a.s.sured her.

A brief knock on the door made them all turn around. Sam poked his head in, his face still as hard and unforgiving as it had been twenty minutes ago. He tipped his Stetson up to view them. ”Ladies? We have a location for where Phoebe was. Now we need a plan.”

Phoebe couldn't stop herself from visibly shaking.

But Nina put her palm over Phoebe's hand and gave it a squeeze before rising. ”C'mon, kiddo. Let's go kick some freakazoid a.s.s. I got another sister to meet.”

CHAPTER 17.

Everyone gathered in Sam's living room with the kind of tension you could taste on your tongue-each one of them locked and ready to load like coiled springs.

”So here's the score,” Sam addressed them, his face openly hard and determined. ”You were at O-Tech today, Phoebe.” His eyes briefly touched hers before resting on the group.

Nina slapped her thigh. ”But we searched that d.a.m.n place up one side and down the other. How the f.u.c.k?”

Sam lifted his Stetson and scratched his head. ”According to Stinky, and some plans he found for O-Tech dating back to the late sixties, O-Tech had underground tunnels running beneath it. They were sealed off as some kind of hazard a long time ago before it was O-Tech-or so everyone thought. Apparently, it wasn't a big deal to knock out one d.a.m.n wall to gain access. It was just one d.a.m.n wall, and if that security guard hadn't woken up when he did, we were two b.l.o.o.d.y feet from it,” Sam growled. ”Either way, I think I also have the answer to the initials Meredith wrote on my memo-pad. TBD is the owner of O-Tech. Whoever it is, they bought the company back in late 2008. Total takeover. Stinky's still working on what those initials mean, but it's when the wall was knocked out. Stinky found some records from a wrecking company in Jersey that did the job. I'm going to take a leap of faith and figure the person who bought O-Tech had the wall removed.”

”And all this to create vampires. Who the f.u.c.k is crazy enough to want to be a vampire on purpose?” Nina asked in wonder. ”I gotta ask myself if they realize they'll never eat another chicken wing again.”

Sam planted his hands on his hips. ”You don't think for one second the government wouldn't if they could get their hands on something like this, Nina? I can think of a million different people who'd take the opportunity. But for right now, I'm not as interested in motive as I am in finding the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and finding out what Phoebe and I have to do to keep from ending up dead.”

Phoebe sat silent while Sam spoke, watching him in all his FBI element. His face was sharper, tension filling each muscle movement in his jaw. His eyes were hawklike and intense, his posture rigid and taut like an arrow just waiting for its bow.

He was virile and smart-and all the goofiness was gone. The succinct edge to his words, the defined way he explained things wasn't anything like the Sam she'd gotten to know.

Yet, it added a whole new element to her fierce attraction to him. One she had to set aside for now-in lieu of that crazy thing called death.

Wanda popped up from the couch, tucking her knee-length sweater around her slender waist. ”Have you figured out how they did this, Sam? How they managed to find a way to manufacture vampires?”

Sam rolled his tongue in his cheek. ”Stinky found some antiques dealer in Lafayette, North Carolina. I don't know how he does what he does, but he traced the origins of the original formula these freaks have back to this guy's store. The guy sold this recipe for vampire to a woman who paid cash for it. The antiques dealer had no idea he was selling anything more than an antique. This formula, or whatever you want to call it, was in some old jewelry box in a hidden trapdoor. Stinky says it's some ancient relic written in bits and pieces of a language that's a linguist's wet dream. Some pretty powerful people hunted the black market for years to find it. And this woman just walks in and buys it like it's toilet paper. His description of her was pretty vague-blond and hot could be anyone, so we're SOL there. All I have is a picture of the jewelry box-but when Stinky did a search on it, that's what he came up with. Archaeologists speculate the jewelry box is just an urban legend.”

Phoebe s.h.i.+vered, though she managed to ask, ”So someone, in essence, cracked this ancient code and started making vampires.”

Sam's nod was curt. ”It would have to be someone pretty rich. It takes a lot of money to hire linguists and create the kind of labs you described, Phoebe. I've got Stinky searching those initials right now to see if they match anyone with that kind of liquid cash available to them.”

”Any word on the name of that man I saw today?” It was all she could do to speak the words. Darnell came up behind her and placed a gentle paw on her shoulder.

”Nothing yet,” was Sam's grim response.

”So now what, Sam?” Wanda asked around her fingers-fingers that Phoebe detected a slight tremble to.

”Now, I go in.”